A Quick Visit to a Mastering Studio

Dan Schmalle and Luke Manley smile in the background, while Brian Damkroger and I sit in the engineers' seats. Photo by Philip O'Hanlon.

On the first day of the California Audio Show, I heard some of the most beautiful music in a room hosted by Acoustic Analysis, The Tape Project, and Bottlehead, featuring a system made of Focal Diablo Utopia loudspeakers, Focal SW1000 Be subwoofers, a VTL TL-6.5 Signature line preamp and MB-450 Signature III monoblock power amplifiers, Siltech cables, and a Bottlehead-modified Otari tape machine. The music had such a smooth, effortless quality to it, unlike anything else I heard at the show: The sound of tape. It was an awesome listening experience.

On the following evening, I got to visit the mastering studio where the team from The Tape Project does its work, duplicating classic albums from master tapes. There, at 1340 Mission Street in San Francisco, I met with VTL’s Luke Manley; On A Higher Note’s Philip O’Hanlon; Acoustic Analysis’ Bob Hodas; The Tape Project’s Dan Schmalle and Piper Payne; and Stereophile’s Brian Damkroger. Hodas and Schmalle played a few recordings for us and gave us a tour of the entire facility.

The coolest part, though, was just sitting where the engineer sits, looking down at all those sliders, buttons, and knobsEAR 660 compressor units and EAR 825 equalizers proved especially tantalizingand staring into the space between the massive Focal Grand Utopia monitors, mated to appropriately powerful (800W!) VTL Siegfried monoblocks, as the music came to life for us.